


Axis

by Muffinworry



Category: Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (Short Film)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muffinworry/pseuds/Muffinworry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axis of Rotation: the line around which any body rotates</p>
<p>Otherwise known as what happened after the kidnapping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Axis

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the DHMIS Kickstarter

Paige sits up with a start and opens her aching eyes. Her face is still bruised and puffy, her lip torn. She doesn’t want to think about her captivity though, so she stares out the window. The harsh glare of streetlights is flickering off the rain-slicked streets. Tony is driving, bending forward to make out the dark road through the swishing wipers. Out the corner of her eye, she sees him give her a glance of such worry that her heart twists, and she closes her eyes again, because she’s not sure she even wants to come home if everything is going to be different between them.

Tony pulls into their driveway, and their…friends…in the back seat scramble into the house. Her legs feel suddenly shaky. Tony opens her door and bends down to pick her up, but she stares at the floor and mumbles something low and vicious, and he steps back, face bleak. Paige staggers up from her seat, clutching hard at the car door, and staring straight in front of her, walks slowly away. Tony watches her until she disappears around the back of the house.

A little later, Tony is sitting on the front steps. The rain is easing off, the sky pitch black. A mild summer night. He sighs and straightens up, and heads to the back yard. There’s an icy white shape in the pool ahead of him. She’s been swimming long enough for the chlorine to wash her ink away. He thinks of dark currents and salt water. Undertows.

Tony kicks off his boots and sets his clothes on a chair before slipping quietly into the pool, barely leaving a ripple on the surface. The water is dark and cool, the air warm.

He floats on his back, hands behind his head. Keeping his gaze on the stars. After a long while, he hears a soft exhale. He extends one arm very carefully until his hand is just beside hers. A moment later, her fingers reach out to brush his, and they float like that in silence, side by side.

He starts to speak, but trails off, still looking up at the sky. He slowly tells her about coming home to find the house empty. About the ransom note arriving, and frantically trying to gather the money, and how the demands kept changing, so that just when he thought he’d gotten it all, it increased again. He pauses. Exhales. Tells her how it still wasn’t enough. She’s still motionless, but she’s listening. He never raises his voice, but something of his fury and helplessness must have come through, because the hand on his tightens.

Just as he’s getting uncomfortably cold, she shivers, and ducks under the water with a splash, surfacing by his head. They’re treading water, gazing at each other, and her eyes are huge and dark in her white face. Slim hands reach out and she pulls herself close to him. Her soaking hair coils around his neck, and tangles at his wrists. Her body in his arms is chilled to the bone, and her kiss is frantic, her mouth almost too hot. Pity is the last thing she wants, so he kisses her roughly, bites at her torn lip. His neck feels warm where she’s holding him, and it takes him a second to realize that her ink is flowing again, black and soft, burning like coals down his shoulders and arms, coating the surface of the pool in oily rainbows. He’s missed her so much. Something in her face relaxes then, and her eyes gleam as he feels her claws rake down his back. His arms encircle her waist, and for a moment they are completely still, motionless, while water and stars spin around them.

She twists to hold him under and a laugh bubbles up, and suddenly his ears are ringing with the sound, and he grins up at her and pulls her closer and deeper.


End file.
